It's 2008

Wow. I remember 1989 like it was yesterday. Seriously. Life goes quickly. I remember talking with Granddad back in the 1990's sometime and saying that he should live till the year 2000. It seemed SO far away at the time.

2007 was a year of transition. I got back from Spain and came back out to BYU to finish the last leg of undergrad. I lived in 3 different apartments and 2 different wards, made a lot of new friends, and had some adventures. Just to recap, here were a few of the big adventures:

-Climbing Mt. Timpanogos in August and camping overnight at the glacial lake near the top. It was one of the most miserable but memorable nights of my life because it was so cold I couldn't sleep! (in the low 30s) But, we finished the climb (on my birthday!), saw some amazing views, could barely walk for a day after we came home, and those of us who went will be forever bonded by our toiling adventure. It was worth it.

-Driving to Baja, Mexico with 10 of us and camping down there. We drove A LOT, waited in an insanely long line at the border, walked around a couple of scary parts of Tijuana (good thing we had guys with us and spoke Spanish!), went surfing, ate some delicious tacos, met some of the nicest people ever at church in Ensenada, and once again, had some major bonding moments. I learned a lot about the benefits (never a dull moment, safety in numbers, splitting costs) and challenges (personality differences, figuring out the money between 10 people--yikes, etc.) about traveling in large groups .

-Driving with 3 friends (Emily, Camilla, and Diane) to Las Vegas for one night. We stayed in an extremely sketchy hotel (good thing the door had a lock and there were four of us!), wandered around the strip and marveled at the hotels, ate at a huge buffet, and left feeling glad that we are LDS (the Vegas lifestyle would get old fast I think). We left at about 3 PM on a Friday and got home at 6 PM on Saturday, which means that we spent about 12 hours of that driving. Ha, I think next time we'll plan that one better.

-attending Llama Fest at the Hari Krishna temple in Spanish Fork, UT. Llama races, touring the temple, good weather, petting llamas... it was a fun time.

There are plenty more things that happened, but those are a few of the more unique experiences. Not everything about 2007 was peachy--there were some hard lessons to learn too, especially some wakeup calls about school, responsibility, and growing up. But, I'm getting there, and I look forward to the new year!

2008 will be a big year with lots of change: I will be graduating from college (FINALLY!) and getting a "real world" job. My long term future plans aren't totally settled, but I'm working hard to look at my options and things are slowly, but surely, becoming clearer. I'll keep you posted, and please do the same!